On the Power of Propaganda
Erna Paris (1938 - 2022) writing in The Globe and Mail:
The core learning future generations must acquire, in addition to the facts of Holocaust history, will be to recognize the impulse to genocide, how and why it starts, the propaganda tools it employs to persuade, and the known consequences of silence and indifference. I think this learning must also include the somewhat rueful acknowledgement that most humans are susceptible to propaganda in various degrees, which is why early-stage vigilance is so crucial.
Erna Paris was born in Toronto, Canada. She was the author of seven works of literary non-fiction and the winner of twelve national and international writing awards for her books, feature writing, and radio documentaries. Her book Long Shadows: Truth, Lies, and History was chosen as one of “The Hundred Most Important Books Ever Written in Canada” by the Literary Review of Canada.
A Frenchman at the Helm of Gucci
WSJ:
Jean-Francois Palus, Gucci’s new CEO was brought in “to reinvent Gucci as a steadier, more dependable brand less vulnerable to shifts in the fashion cycle. It is an approach that aims to bring its strategy closer to some of its biggest rivals, including Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Hermès.”
Gucci has also opened a series of high-end salons where nothing costs less than $40,000—and some pieces can cost as much as $3 million.
Photography is About Sharing
[T] he core of the photographic act is the verb “to share“ and that photography is all about sharing a moment I frame and want to hold on to for now, and for all time, and to be shared with myself and others. he core of the photographic act is the verb “to share“ and that photography is all about sharing a moment I frame and want to hold on to for now, and for all time, and to be shared with myself and others.
‘Let’s bring back the blog.’
Alan Jacobs writing on his blog entitled The Homebound Symphony:
[W]hile many of the old-school blogs are dead and gone, a surprising number of them remain active, and still have a multitude of commenters. In turns out that social media did not kill blogs, but just co-opted the discourse about blogs. Once journalists got addicted to Twitter, they stopped paying attention to what was happening elsewhere — but that didn’t stop it from happening._
[…]
I don’t want to bring back the blogosphere, I definitely want to bring back the blog._
[…]
[T]his is the time for people to rediscover the pleasures of blogging – of writing at whatever length you want, and posting photos, and embedding videos, and linking to music playlists, all on your little corner of the internet._
Let’s bring back the blog. And leave all the bad things spawned by the blogosphere to social media, where they belong.
Have Your Own Space on the Internet
Om on big publishing platforms:
No matter how often this happens, we don’t learn our lessons — we continue to till other people’s proverbial land and keep using their social spaces. Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Medium, we get trapped in the big platforms because they dangle the one big carrot in front of our eyes: the reach, the audience, and the influence._
And we keep doing their bidding — they use our social networks, our work, and our attention — and, in the process, help make their networks gigantic and indispensable. We become pawns in their end game. And then they change the rules of the game — after all, if you own the league, you make the rules._
I have known the truth about social platforms. I quit Facebook and Instagram years ago, and candidly I am better for it. I don’t need 5000 friends — 15 good ones will do. And as far as sharing photos — I am happy that I have about a thousand people interested in my photographic work instead of 100,000 followers on Instagram.
Remembering Maisie Hitchcock
I recently learned that, Maisie Hitchcock, a guide on a Rick Steves tour of Switzerland I took in 2018 died peacefully of ovarian cancer on August 9, 2023 in the company of her family members.
Maisie was a kind, gentle guide who did an excellent job showing us the highlights of Switzerland. Although she was English, she lived in Berlin and spoke fluent German. She enjoyed people and knew how to relate to each person as an individual. Maisie’s father, Robyn Hitchcock, an English singer-songwriter and guitarist wrote a loving memory of his daughter on Instagram.
Maisie is the third from the left in the photo, above.
China’s Population Declining Rapidly
WSJ:
With the number of babies in free fall—fewer than 10 million were born in 2022, compared with around 16 million in 2012—China is headed toward a demographic collapse. China’s population, now around 1.4 billion, is likely to drop to just around half a billion by 2100, according to some projections.
…
Demographers and researchers predict that data will show Chinese births dipping below 9 million in 2023. The United Nations forecasts 23 million births in India, which in 2023 passed China as the world’s most populous country. The U.S. will have around 3.7 million babies born in 2023, the U.N. estimated.
China has also made it much harder to block pregnancies or to get an abortion.
French Museums Welcomed Record Numbers in 2023
Le Louvre had 8.9 million visitors in 2023, up 14% compared with 2022. Versailles had 8.1 million visitors, 18% of whom were Americans. Most, but not all, French museums reached pre-Covid levels of attendance.
Only the Pompidou Center had a decrease in visitors due to a strike in October. The Pompidou Center will be closed from 2025 to 2030 for much needed renovations 50 years after its opening.
French Jews Leaving France for Israel in Greater Numbers Out of Fear
The Times of Israel and Le Monde report that more than 1,500 antisemitic incidents occurred in France between October 7 and mid-November, 2023. This is more than three times higher than the 436 antisemitic incidents recorded over the entire 2022 in France.
Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration has recorded a 430 percent increase in the number of applications from France since the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas. The Ministry assists immigrants from the initial preparation stages, before arriving in Israel, through immigration and integration into all aspects of Israeli society, and runs programs to encourage immigrant entrepreneurs and Hebrew studies:
A number of French Jews confirmed to The Times of Israel that they no longer feel safe in France and feel compelled to hide their kippah or other outward signs of Judaism for fear of being targeted.
Barnes & Noble Returning to Georgetown in DC
Gone from Georgetown since 2011, the the United States’ largest national bookstore chain will return to its original location at 3040 M St. NW, having signed a 33,754-square-foot lease for the same three floors, as first reported by the Washington Business Journal.
It’s nice to see Georgetown improving, especially with a new bookstore.
Dutch Holocaust Survivors Spied on as a ‘Danger to Democracy’
Dutch Jews who survived the death camps and returned to the Netherlands were for years monitored by the Dutch secret service because they were considered to be extremists and a danger to democracy, the Parool …
The revelations are based on documentation in the archives of the BVD, the precursor of the current AIVD security service, which the paper had access to via the National Archives.
Many Holocaust survivors were spied on until the 1980s, with the BVD reporting on memorial services and taking notes on who was in attendance, the paper said.
The Nederlands Auschwitz Comité, founded in 1956 by survivors, was also considered to be an extremist organisation and monitored, the paper said. The BVD even had a mole within the organisation who reported back on everything that happened.
The article explains that only 35,000 of the country’s Jewish population of 140,000 survived the war. In addition, 102,000 of the 107,000 Jews who were deported were killed.
2023: DC’s Deadliest Year Since 1997
The nation’s capital recorded more homicides in 2023 than in any year since 1997, giving the District the fifth-highest murder rate among the nation’s biggest cities.
The 274 confirmed victims ranged from infants to octogenarians. They were killed in homes, in Metro stations and in motor vehicles; they were killed in alleys, in school zones and in public parks. They were slain on streets by acquaintances and strangers and in the crossfire of warring neighborhood crews, in double shootings and triple shootings. They died in the dark and the dawn and under the midday sun in all parts of Washington, from its poorest precincts to its busiest commercial and nightlife areas.
Making and Keeping Friends Takes Time and Effort
Clare Ansberry writes about making and keeping friends for The Wall Street Journal:
- People can generally maintain three to five close friendships.
- We need between 40 and 60 hours together for an acquaintance to become a casual friend.
- To move from casual friends to close friends, you need to spend an additional 140 to 160 hours together for a total of about 200 hours.
- However, deeper interactions can accelerate that timeline. You can form a close bond in less than 200 hours with meaningful conversations and a willingness to be vulnerable.
- Sharing things about yourself can lead to close friendships.
- It’s important to maintain close friendships, especially in person.
Paradise is Where You Stand
Pico Iyer writing in The New York Times:
As a constant traveler for 49 years now, I sometimes feel I’ve been zigzagging from one “paradise” to the next. From Tahiti to Tibet, from the Seychelles to Antarctica, I’ve found tourist posters conspiring with travelers’ hopes to present every place as a kind of Eden. Yet often it’s our very notions of paradise that intensify divisions. In Sri Lanka I’d realized that the island has so often been taken to be Arcadia — Arabs saw it as “contiguous with the Garden of Eden,” and an Italian papal legate announced that the waters of paradise could be there — that the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British and millions of us tourists have all scrambled to grab a piece of it.
Besides, if I really did come upon a calm and self-contained Eden, what would it have to gain from me? I, like any visitor, could only be the serpent in the garden.
All our paradise, our only hopes, had to be uncovered here, in the midst of real life and in the face of death.
Netanyahu on Israel’s Expansion of Diplomatic Relations in 2020
In its first seventy-two years, Israel made peace with two Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan. In the span of four months, Israel had made peace with four more.
Netanyahu, Benjamin. Bibi: My Story (p. 634). Threshold Editions. Kindle Edition.
Israel’s established diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on September 11, 2020 under the aegis of the Abraham Accords.
This marked the first instance of Arab–Israeli normalization since 1994, when the Israel–Jordan peace treaty came into effect.
In December 2020, Morocco joined the accords and normalized relations with Israel. Then, in January 2021, Sudan joined the Abraham Accords and normalized relations with Israel.
What will happen next is an open question after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The October 7 attack was the deadliest terrorist attack against Israel since the state’s establishment in 1948, and the scale of the death toll was unprecedented in Israeli history.
Blogging for the Joy of Sharing
Simon Reynolds writing in The Guardian explains that he started blogging in 2002 and he will never stop blogging, even if if it’s an outdated format. It’s even ok with him if nobody reads his blog:
I’ve resisted the idea of going the Substack or newsletter route. If I were to become conscious of having a subscriber base, I’d start trying to please them. And blogging should be the opposite of work. But if it’s not compelled, blogging is compulsive: an itch I have to scratch. And for every post published, there are five that never get beyond notepad scrawls or fumes in the back of my mind.
Blogging Platforms
Jason Velazquez recently shared a handy list of blogging platforms, many of which are unfamiliar to me.
Photography: Sharing Moments
I have always said that at the core of the photographic act is the verb “to share“ and that photography is all about sharing a moment I frame and want to hold on to for now, and for all time, and to be shared with myself and others.
Switzerland and Dachau
Germany’s National Socialist (Nazi) government and Switzerland had substantial ties. Switzerland’s contribution to the construction of the Dachau concentration camp near Munich is not well known.
Before WWII, Extroc, SA, a Swiss state-subsidized timber company built the Dachau concentration camp, under a contract for 13 million Swiss francs. The contract was negotiated by Colonel Henri Guisan, the son of the later Swiss Commander-in-Chief Henri Guisan (1874–1960) and a Swiss national hero. The Swiss Colonel was in turn connected to Hans Wilhelm Eggen, an SS captain who bought timber in Switzerland for the Waffen SS. This was the wood used to construct Dachau. Dachau was the first regular concentration camp established by the Nazi government.1
According to a now declassified CIA report, Eggen often went to “Switzerland under cover of a delivery agent for wooden barracks.” Eggen was a friend of Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS. In Nazi Germany, the SS controlled the German police forces and the concentration camp system.
See, Roberts, Andrew, The Storm of War (p. 113). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition; Goñi, Uki, The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina (p. 170). Granta Books. Kindle Edition.
‘We need to be heard’
Annie Mueller writing on Substack:
It’s so important to be heard, and to know you’re heard. Not just when there’s a crisis, or a wound, or a big change. We need to be heard. It’s a core need. It’s why we sing songs, make music, write stories, tell jokes, make art, design products. Sometimes it’s also why we lash out, get aggressive, get mean — because we forget, or don’t know, how to make ourselves heard in a better way.
We need to be heard because to be heard is to be recognized and valued.